DAVIS, STUART

born Dec. 7, 1894, Philadelphia died June 24, 1964, New York City U.S. abstract artist whose idiosyncratic Cubist paintings of the garish aspects of the urban landscape presaged the use of commercial and advertising art by Pop artists of the 1960s. Davis grew up in an environment in which art was a part of daily life. His father was a graphic artist and art editor of a Philadelphia newspaper, where he worked with William Glackens, George Luks, John Sloan, and Everett Shinn, all later famous as members of the Ashcan School of U.S. painting. His parents encouraged his interest in art, and, at the age of 16, he quit high school to study painting in New York City under Robert Henri, leader of the group known as The Eight (later absorbed into the Ashcan School), whose teaching emphasized the importance of taking subject matter from common street life. By 1913 Davis was competent enough to show five watercolours in the famous Armory Show. This was the first large exhibit in the U.S. of avant-garde European art and marked a turning point in his career. In the next few years he strove to achieve the compositional order, nonimitative colour, and the shallow picture space characteristic of the new European painting. He began to experiment with collage (a recently invented technique of making compositions from bits of paper and objects glued to a surface) and sometimes varied the usual process by making paintings of his collages, as in Lucky Strike (1921; Museum of Modern Art, New York City), finally arriving at a completely nonillusionistic style, which culminated in his Egg Beater series of 192730. In 1928 Davis travelled to France, where he spent a year painting relatively realistic street scenes in Paris. Back in the U.S. during the Depression of the 1930s, he developed a new style based on the contrast between rhythmic interplay of geometric areas of flat colour and objects clearly defined in linear perspective. After the mid-1940s, Davis produced many of his most important works, such as The Mellow Pad (194551; Mr. and Mrs. Milton Lowenthal Collection, New York City) and Little Giant Still Life (1950; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond). These meticulously planned and executed paintings possess a wit and gaiety totally alien to the then dominant style of art, Abstract Expressionism. Davis' work was inspired by taxis, chain-store fronts, and neon signs. Its dissonant colours and lively, repetitive rhythms were visual analogues to jazz music, which he loved. Colonial Cubism exemplifies Davis' later work.